My Athletic Childhood Friend Is Way Too Weird

Nekoyashiki Rina is 13 years old, an utterly ordinary junior high school girl currently going through her chuunibyou phase. She hates sports more than anything. After diligently slacking off for years, she suddenly realizes that all her childhood friends are sporty types. She's surrounded by athletes. Isn't something wrong here?

One childhood friend is playing basketball, another is playing tennis. Her best friend's older brother plays volleyball, and so does the boy next door. They used to talk about the anime club all the time, but now it's all about cycling.

And all anyone ever talks about is the national tournament, IH, and stuff like that. Such youth! (Not.)

Nekoyashiki Rina thinks this is one hundred percent, no, ten thousand percent wrong.

She's always steered clear of sports, so Rina has managed to keep a normal worldview. But after making a bet with her friends, she goes to slack off as a manager for her childhood friends' clubs and discovers... Are her sporty childhood friends kind of weird?

Where the heck have these giant socks brought me? Is this still Japan?

Is this how basketball and tennis are played? This can't be right. Is this world even normal?

So, after being tormented by all kinds of surreal sports, Nekoshiki Rina cheerfully brings her dear friends along to experience the charms of athletics. :-D

Her poor friends, forced to have their worldviews shattered: Not fun.

Nekoshiki Rina: Why are you all stammering and silent, my dear subjects? Is something troubling you?

Konoha Matsuzuru, Minamoto Saki: ...We could have grown old in peace and innocence.

Rina has already made peace with fantastical sports and even joined in on the torment and mischief. (She was already using her own absurd antics to torment the sporty boys in return.) After starting high school, she discovers there's another sport that's so plain and unassuming: volleyball!

And so she sets off on yet another path of tormenting the volleyball boys.

Konoha Matsuzuru: My brother doesn't deserve this...

Minamoto Saki: Continuing to lie sweetly in a corpse-like heap.

[Maybe this is a slice-of-life ensemble story (probably), but maybe not, since the main perspective is definitely still Rina's. Anyway, as always, I'll write whatever comes to mind and follow my own preferences and whatever's fun. Basically, it's a story about tormenting people, with an everyone-loves-the-heroine vibe.]

The viewpoint and narrative person might change a lot, and the story won't be limited to Rina. I'll also write from Konoha Matsuzuru and Minamoto Saki's perspectives. Everyone's relationships are platonic, but since I used to ship couples, some of the platonic stuff might come off as a little ambiguous. Ship whatever you want.

The romance will be niche and minimal, and I might not write it explicitly at all, maybe just a small extra chapter. But I might also focus on it a lot later. It's hard to say.

The early part will mostly focus on tormenting the tennis and basketball characters, with volleyball barely mentioned. Rina will just know that Konoha Matsuzuru's older brother plays volleyball and that the sport exists, without knowing much about it. Later, after moving up to high school, she'll start tormenting the volleyball players. Or maybe not. We'll see how things go. ✌︎( ᐛ )✌︎

Theme: Write whatever comes to mind